g
us. We must watch ourselves. Oh, don't misconstrue that remark, please. We
must see to it that the world does not judge us entirely by our past." She
was very cool about it, he thought,--and confident.

"As I said before, Anne, I see no occasion to--"

"Very well," she interrupted. "I beg your pardon. You asked me to see you
to-night. What is it that you wish to say to me?"

He leaned forward in the chair, his elbows on the arms of it, and regarded
her fixedly. "Has my grandfather ever appealed to you to--to--" He stopped,
for she had turned deathly pale; she closed her eyes tightly as if to shut
out some visible horror; a perceptible shudder ran through her slender
body. As Braden started to rise, she raised her eye-lids, and in her
lovely eyes he saw horror, dread, appeal, all in one. "I'm sorry," he
murmured, in distress "I should have been more--"

"It's all right," she said, recovering herself with an effort. "I thought
I had prepared myself for the question you were so sure to ask. I have
been through hell in the past two weeks, Braden. I have had to listen to
the most infamous proposals--but perhaps it would be better for me to
repeat them to you just as they were made to me, and let you judge for
yourself."

She leaned back in the chair, as if suddenly tired. Her voice was low and
tense, and at no time during her recital did she raise it above the level
at which she started. Plainly, she was under a severe strain and was
afraid that she might lose control of herself.

It appeared that Mr. Thorpe had put her to the supreme test. In brief, he
had called upon his young wife to put him out of his misery! Cunningly, he
had beset her with the most amazing temptations. Her story was one of
those incredible things that one cannot believe because the mind refuses
to entertain the utterly revolting. In the beginning the old man, consumed
by pain, implored her to perform a simple act of mercy. He told her of the
four little pellets and the glass of water. At that time she treated the
matter lightly. The next day he began his sly, persistent campaign against
what he was pleased to call her inhumanity; he did not credit her with
scruples. There was something Machiavellian in the sufferer's scheming. He
declared that there could be no criminal intent on her part, therefore her
conscience would never be afflicted. The fact that he consented to the act
was enough to clear her conscience, if that was all that restrained h